But of course, the bus strike ain't quite over. Although a good number of Ottawa buses are soon returning, it appears that much of the bus fleet won't be returning for quite awhile yet; up to 10 weeks. There's now a message on OC Transpo's website about post-strike bus schedules. (Note to future generations: It appears as though the OC Transpo website uses frames. I apologize if that link only leads to the main page in a few years.)

It was a long, long haul. To put it simply, the city of Ottawa relies on OC Transpo. Want proof?

Ottawa has the highest bus ridership during rush hours in North America, with transit ferrying 45 to 48 per cent of workers. A quarter of Ottawa's 450,000 jobs are downtown, with many workers living in the surrounding suburbs.

Here at Marketing Breakthroughs, we weren't affected too hugely. There was a little bit of carpooling, but it wasn't nearly as rough for us as it was for some other Ottawa businesses. The OC Transit Strike put a pretty big dent in Ottawa's business, and it's worth looking into some of the effects.

But aside from the numbers, it was the individual stories that are the most compelling. Everywhere you go, someone has a friend or a relative being incredibly inconvenienced by the strike. Maybe they lost a job or spend 4 hours in the car every day. Many students haven't gone home, but have stayed at a friend's house closer to campus.

A Subway restaurant near MB has been closed - none of its employees can get to work. Foot traffic in Rideau Centre was down 40% because of the bus strike. Many of the small convenience stores whose target markets were OC Transpo users were gravely affected. Of course, anyone whose target market relies on taking the bus would be hugely affected. So stores catering to students, especially those downtown, were in a very tough spot.

I also noticed, just today, someone using PPC ads if you searched for "OC Transpo strike" on Google. The ad offered t-shirts. I've seen several t-shirts in shopping malls with a "NOC-Transpo" logo and a tagline along the lines of "Not serving the city of Ottawa since December 10." I can't find the ad now, so my guess is he hit his PPC budget. It could very well be a young entrepreneur who doesn't have a lot of cash to back his little venture.